A few are dated but number 74 is one I think about a lot when programming.<p><pre><code> Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to see it as a soap bubble?
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Important to remember this was written in the early ‘80’s at the end of Perlis’s long career. For most of these to stay relevant and humorous 50 years later is pretty impressive.
<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/947955.1083808" rel="nofollow">https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/947955.1083808</a><p><a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/947955.1083808" rel="nofollow">https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/947955.1083808</a> [pdf]<p>Hurray for more open access from ACM, here's the original publication with the 10 missing epigrams.
I like this one a lot: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing."<p>I frequently see newer programmers trying to learn as many languages as possible to list them on their resume...what they don't realize is that learning syntax is pretty much irrelevant to programming skill. Choose one language, master the building blocks, then choose another that works completely differently. Do this two or three times, and all of the sudden you can write in any language you want because you understand the fundamentals.
I've seen several of these before in SICP and other places, but happy to find a longer collection here! Perlis just has his own style and humour...
Edgy. I wouldn't pay too much attention of them. E.g.<p>> 9. It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures.<p>I'm sure that isn't always the case. At the very least, it shouldn't lead to mixing data structures.